Bones in Pali Aike. The Late Holocene archaeological record of Cóndor and Potrok Aike localities

R. BARBERENA; F. MARTIN

Río Gallegos (Santa Cruz, Argentina)

Taller; ICDP-Workshop PASADO. Potrok Aike Lake Sediment Archive Drilling Project; 2006

ICDP-Universidad de Bremen

The study of bones is one of the main sources of archaeological information on subsistence and geographical distribution of human populations issues through time. We plan to contribute to the ICDP workshop that will be held in Río Gallegos by presenting a review of our recent work with human and faunal bones in the Pali Aike Volcanic Field, southern Patagonia. We also integrate information produced by other teams working in the area (i.e. Gómez Otero 1993-1994). We believe that the information already available for Potrok Aike locality (Gómez Otero 1993-1994) provides a good starting point, on the basis of which a more intensive archaeological survey and sampling of surface and stratified deposits can be designed. Since this will contribute to expand the archaeological knowledge of the Potrok Aike locality, it will provide a stronger basis for the correlation with palaeoclimatic data. This local information, altogether with data from a wider spatial scale, can be used as a measure of the impact of particular climatic variations on human susbsistence. In particular, the intensity of the archaeological signal can be used as a proxy for human presence under different climatic situations.